T SOCIETY ~@IB1 IN":OU'STR,IAL AR,CH:EOLOGY ~ Im \YIYl ~ IL Im urr urr Im rn Volume 20 Summer 1991 Number 2 20th Annual Cont., June 13-17, 1991 Chicago: Industrial Heartland, U.S.A. Ahm·e: Bridges and architecture arc two of Chicago's Leji: The Bismarck (and to ur leaders Kim & Linda prime attractions. Viewed on the Sunday boat tour. the Brietcnbach) welcomed the Society to Chicago. huge Merchandise Mart (1930) looms above the Franklin­ Orleans St. double-leaf trunnion bascule. The Mart was Ahon•: Chicago no longer is Sandburg's ··Hog Butcher for the world's largest building ( in fl oor area). until the the World." Only the 1875 Union Stock Yard Gate INHL: Pentagon was built. Burnham & Root! remains from the original 475 acres of yards and packing houses. R . Frame photo.\·. Below: Jn the Mainstream Station pumphouse, 300 ft. underground. th e painted circle shows the scale of the 33- ft.-diam. hardrock tunnel. R. Frame photos. town of Pullman, to the little known, such as the Replogle Globe plant, and from the early-the Illinois & Michigan Canal, to the most modem-the great Mainstream Pumping Station. Throughout the weekend we took in the neighbor­ hood IA around the conference HQ, the Bismarck Hotel, including the Chicago El and the many movable bridges, mar­ velous engineering works that are part of Chicagoans ' everyday lives. A welcoming reception Thursday evening at the Chicago Maritime Muse um in the historic North Pier Terminal building kicked off the festivities. Paul Barrett, Illinois In st. of Tech., presented a slide overview of the city's transporta­ tion networks and related industrial development. We viewed the museum's photo exhibits, including "Port to Port: 300 Years of Commerce on the Great Lakes." Phil Elmes, museum founder and conference committee member, helped At long last, the SIA came to Chicago. It was fitting that organize the event. this legendary city of the nation's industrial heartland should Friday morning we were up and on the buses early for the be the site for the Society's 20th anniversary conference. day's process tours. Registrants selected from among five Over 200 of the faithful attended, about equalling the city's different tours, with most stopping at two relatively modem 1834 population. With such a feast of urban IA to choose examples of major urban public works: Mainstream Pumping from, almost any selection of sites and tours might have been Station and the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant. worth the trip. Our host and co-sponsor, the Public Works Located in Hodgkins, Ill ., the Mainstream Pumping Historical Society, pulled out all the stops to arrange the Station of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of widest possible sampling, from the internationally acclaimed Greater Chicago (MWRDGC) is one of two stations in the Published by the society for Industrial Archeology Editor: Robert M. Frame III Room 5020 National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution Washington, D.C. 20560 ~1. Left: As part of the exhibit at the Mainstream Pumping Station, this ingenious model rises out of its base to reveal TARP's complex underground system. Right: At the end of the process at the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, sludge ("dewatered wastewater solids") is conveyed {aborej to a truck- and rail-loading facility. The Metropolitan Sanitary Dist. locomotive hauls sludge to drying areas in cylinder side­ dump DIFCO gondolas {helmr/. R. Frame photos. Tunnel and Reservoir Project (TARP-Deep Tunnel). It was Illinois River valley and operated until 1988; Lockport designed to prevent backflows into Lake Michigan, eliminate Power Station of the MWRDGC ( 1907), which not only gen­ waterway pollution caused by combined sewer outflows, and erates power but allows outflow control of the Sanitary & provide an outlet for flood waters. We made a 300-ft. ear­ Ship Canal; and Commonwealth Edison State Line popping trip down the elevator to view the underground pump Generating Station, built in 1927, which once boasted the station for the immense 35-ft.-diam. main tunnel. Based on world's largest turbine-generator. planning that began in the 1950s, Mainstream construction Replogle Globes, Inc. is the world's largest manufacturer was begun in 1976 and completed in 1985. The tunnel-boring of geographical globes. There, we were surrounded by a technology used here later was adopted for the English cosmos of miniature planets-all Earths- ranging from an "Chunnel'' project. asteroid-like 4. 7 ins. to a whopping Jupiterian 32 ins. Mainstream is designed to pump sewage and stormwater to (retailing for $4,500), all in varying stages of manufacture. the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, one of the largest Newsprint manufacturing was viewed at FSC Paper Co. in wastewater treatment facilities in the world, serving a 260-sq.­ Alsip, where this relatively modern ( 1968) plant uses only old mile drainage area. Stickney actually is two plants, the West newspapers as raw material. Two mammoth printing opera­ Side (1930), which treats 40%, and the Southwest (1939), tions were toured: the great Lakeside Press of R.R. which treats 60%. The maximum combined capacity is 1,440 Donnelley & Sons (courtesy of conf. supporter Gaylord million gals./day. When flowage exceeds capacity, it is Donnelley), publishers of the Sears catalog, among other diverted into the I-billion-gal. TARP tunnel system for tem­ items; and the Tribune Freedom Center, the spanking-new porary storage and is treated later, rather than overflowing and highly automated printing plant for the Chicago Tribune. into area waterways. Stickney employs conventional treat­ The latter seemingly operated without the benefit of human ment technology, discharging the effluent into the Sanitary labor; to some, it was an eerie-and dispiriting-sight. Drainage & Ship Canal. Chicago lived up to its name as Carl Sandburg's "Tool Other public works facilities visited on Friday included: Maker.·' Among the metalworking sites visited was Brad the Marseilles Hydropower Plant (courtesy of Illinois Foote Gear Works in Elgin, which opened in 1924 and is Power Co.), built 1911 to power the interurban system in the now the world leader in bevel gears, specializing in induction hardening of individual gear teeth. Here we witnessed gear REPLOGLE GLOBES. INC. cutting of every imaginable variety and a fiery oil-quenching Left: Replogle's cosmos, suspended from overhead conveyors. Center: Die-cut hemispheres await global mounting. process. At century-old Goodman Equipment Co., Bedford Right: A southern hemisphere is fined into an assembly jig. J. Shprent: photos. Park, we observed the assembly of mining locomotives. 2 SIA Newsletter, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 1991 Tribble, who led the tour, confirmed our observation that the blacksmith's work is more art than science. Finally, tradi­ tional IA was viewed in the tour of the Joliet Steel Works ruins, which include the archeological remains of early blast furnaces. Joliet Steel began as the Union Coal, Iron & Transportation Co. rail mill in 1869. Friday's events concluded with dinner at The Berghoff, Chicago's renowned German restaurant, followed by the tra­ ditional show & tell slide presentations. Saturday was devoted to paper sessions. There was a wide variety of presentations, including: the "8th Annual Historic Bridge Symposium," chaired by HAER Chief Eric DeLony; three series of papers on Chicago IA; two "Iron/Extractive'' sessions; and sessions devoted to Bureau of Reclamation pro­ jects, "Rust Belt Rehabilitation," and IA documentation. During the luncheon in the Bismarck, President David Salay chaired the SIA Annual Business Meeting (see meeting min­ BRAD FOOTE GEAR WORKS, INC. utes under "SIA Affairs" in this issue). That evening, the Almre: World's only plant capable of induction-hardening of curved-tooth bevel gears. Chicago Historical Society graciously hosted the SIA' s Below left: Special cutter produces herringbone gear. annual banquet, catered amidst the CHS 's noteworthy Below right: A Brad Foote specialty: the curved-tooth bevel pinion. R. Frame photos. exhibits. Featuring nouvelle cuisine, it may well have been the most elegant in the annals of SIA feasts. Kudos to CHS Director Elsworth Brown and Curator Bob Goler (as well as the chefs). On Sunday we all took the same two half-day tours, one by boat and one by bus, each starting in downtown Chicago in the morning, meeting in Joliet at midday, and returning by the opposite mode in the afternoon. The bus tour wandered ·through the city's many industrial neighborhoods, touching the near west side, home to Jane Addams' historic Hull House, through the Czech area known as Pilsen, near the site of International Harvester's McCormick Plant, and past the Central Manufacturing District, an early industrial park. We made a stop at the Union Stock Yard Gate [Burnham & Root, 1875; NHL], sole remnant of the once-vast and sprawling stockyard and ,meat....... packing zone that had made it "Hog While at Anderson Shumaker Co., a small open-die forge shop founded in 1902, the mostly Polish, highly skilled work force manned four steam hammers ranging from 1,500 lbs. to 6,000 lbs., turning out stainless and high-temp. steel forgings for a wide range of industries. As we watched, fascinated by the perfect synchronization of the hammer's blows and manipulation of the forging, company president Richard J. GOODMAN EQUIPMENT. INC. Below: Motors and batteries for mining locomotive. Near right: 20-ton locomotive awaits shipment to Dilworth Coal Mine in Pa. Far right: Customers can design cab arrangement using this wooden mockup of 15-ton­ locomotive. Right ahm·e: Newly assembled cab with traditional controller. R. Frame photos. SIA News/el/er. Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 1991 3 CHICAGO HEIGHTS STEEL. Hands define the roll area that will split one 112-lb.